The sharpest image of a black hole improved with the help of AI

Miscellaneous / by admin / April 13, 2023

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"Orange donut" lost weight.

A famous photo of a supermassive black hole has been improved with the help of artificial intelligence. Now you can see some details better on it. Updated Image published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The famous photo was taken in 2019 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The black hole, or “orange donut,” as astronomers sometimes jokingly call it, lies at the very center of galaxy M87, whose dimensions are comparable to the solar system, and the mass is 6.5 billion times greater than the mass Sun.

A black hole before (left) and after (right) sharpening with the PRIMO algorithm. Image: Medeiros et al. 2023

With the help of modern technology, scientists have cleaned up the image and increased its sharpness. Due to this, the dark central part has become brighter and clearer, and the width of the luminous gas ring is approximately two times smaller.

With our new PRIMO machine learning technique, we were able to achieve the maximum resolution of the current array. Because we can't study black holes up close, image detail plays a critical role in our ability to understand its behavior.

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Leah Medeiros

Astronomer at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (USA)

The PRIMO algorithm is based on the principle of machine learning, which allows computers to generate rules based on large sets of training materials. In this case, he analyzed over 30,000 highly accurate simulated images. accreting gas of black holes and, on the basis of the revealed regularities, "finished" the image without distorting the original.